Search behaviour is shifting in a way we haven't seen since the move from desktop to mobile. AI answer engines are changing how customers find and choose businesses, and most marketing teams are still catching up.
First: what's an answer engine?
Traditional search engines return a list of links. Answer engines (tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, and voice assistants) return a single synthesised response.
Instead of giving you ten options to click through, they give you one answer, often without the user ever visiting a website. The source that gets cited in that answer is getting the visibility. Everyone else gets nothing.
"The window to get ahead on AEO is open, but it won't stay that way. Early movers are building authority that will compound for years."
So what is AEO?
AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation) is the discipline of making your content the answer that AI tools reach for when your customers ask relevant questions.
It builds on the foundations of traditional SEO (authority, structured content, technical excellence), but adds specific techniques to get your content cited in AI-generated responses:
- Structured, question-answering content. AI tools look for clear, concise answers to specific questions. Content structured around questions and answers, with proper headings, FAQs, and structured data, is far more likely to be cited.
- Topical authority. Being cited as an authoritative source means comprehensively covering your subject area. Shallow, thin content rarely gets cited. Deep, well-structured topic clusters do.
- Schema markup. Structured data (JSON-LD) helps AI tools understand your content: what you do, who you are, your products, your reviews. The richer your schema, the more context you give.
- E-E-A-T signals. Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness. AI tools weight citations toward sources that demonstrate real expertise, not just keyword density.
Why does it matter now?
Two things are happening simultaneously:
AI search adoption is accelerating. Google AI Overviews now appear for a significant proportion of commercial queries. ChatGPT has over 100 million weekly active users, many using it for product research and discovery. Perplexity is growing fast. Voice search on Alexa, Siri and Google Assistant is all AI-driven.
Most businesses haven't adapted. The content strategies most sites are running were built for traditional keyword search. They're not structured to be cited by AI. That means there's a genuine competitive window available right now to businesses that move early.
AEO vs SEO: what's the difference?
They're complementary, not competing. AEO builds on a solid SEO foundation: you can't get cited in AI answers if you don't have authority, fast site performance, and good technical structure.
The key difference is intent. Traditional SEO targets keywords and rankings. AEO targets questions and citations. The best strategies run both in parallel.
How to get started with AEO
There are three practical places to start:
- Map your customers' questions. Make a list of the 20 to 30 questions your customers ask most frequently, whether in sales calls, support, or reviews. These are your AEO targets. Build content that answers each one definitively.
- Add structured FAQ sections. Every key service or product page should have an FAQ section with concrete, concise answers. Add FAQPage schema markup so AI tools can easily parse and cite the content.
- Build E-E-A-T signals. Showcase genuine expertise: team bios with credentials, case studies with real numbers, client testimonials. AI tools are increasingly able to assess the trustworthiness of a source, not just its keyword relevance.